Articles 2014 - 2016

I've already reached that point where I have pretty much given up on keeping up with new music. There is just way too much of it out there, and half the time to me it just sounds like people singing on top of video game noises. I know that this makes me sound about 35 years older than I am, and do you know what, I am completely comfortable with this and I am getting by just fine listening to Bruce Springsteen, The Replacements, and a steady diet of both the country & western music genres whenever I am in the car driving.

However, once or twice a year I will hear a new pop song that I just really, really like and the most recent one to catch my year is "Royals" by New Zealand teenager Lorde. The song has sold 3.7 million copies in the United States alone and topped many of Billboards various charts (Hot 100, Top 40, Alternative) for most of the fall as well as similar success worldwide.

In September, Lorde made this statement to VH1 about the songs origin, "I'd been kind of thinking about writing that song for a while and been pulling together a couple little lines here and there, and I had this image from the National Geographic of this dude signing baseballs. He was a baseball player and his shirt said Royals. I was like, I really like that word, because I'm a big word fetishist. I'll pick a word and I'll pin an idea to that."

The picture in question is one of George Brett from the July 1976 issue of National Geographic and is shown above. George Brett is also my favorite non-Ranger player of all time, probably stemming from my Little League team in the late 80's being named the Royals but later growing in appreciation of just how good the first ballot Hall of Fame inductee was on the baseball field. I have a small library of baseball books and movies but when it comes to other collectibles I am somewhat indifferent but I own 4 baseball cards, 1 of which is the Fleer card commemorating Brett's Pine Tar Incident, and 3 autographs, 1 of which is an baseball autographed by Brett that I received for Christmas in 1990. The one moment I am most proud of having attended as a baseball fan was the Rangers vs the Royals on October 3, 1993 which ended up being the final game for both Brett and Nolan Ryan as well the last game played in Arlington Stadium (Turnpike Stadium).

So really what I am saying is, if there is any 60 year old man from Kansas City that deserves a hit song written about him by a teenage pop starlets, it's George Brett.